Audience faints at 'realistic' amputation film

By Christine Kellett

September 15, 2010 — 11.37am

The big screen reenactment of a US mountain climber cutting off his own arm with a blunt pen knife has shocked the Toronto International Film Festival, reportedly causing several people to faint in the audience.

English filmmaker Danny Boyle's 127 Hours documents the real-life dilemma of 27-year-old adventurer Aron Ralston, who became pinned by a boulder while on a canyoning trip in Utah in 2003. Facing starvation and certain death, he chose to break and then amputate his right forearm in order to escape and survive

"You could clearly see people in shock, struggling to stay in their seats, working to get past the intensity of what was going on in front of them," American film critic John Foote wrote.

"So overwhelmed were these [audience] members by what was happening on screen ...they simply could not take it."

"I cannot remember a reaction to a film like this in a very long time, perhaps not since The Exorcist sent audiences scurrying for the doors."

It follows similar reports of medics being called to two separate screenings at the Telluride Film Festival in Colorado on September 6, where the film debuted.

Amazing tale ... Aron Ralston at the Toronto International Film Festival.Credit:Getty

Fox Searchlight spokeswoman Michelle Hooper was quoted as saying a young woman suffered a panic attack and an older man had to be wheeled out of the cinema on a gurney after becoming faint.

Boyle, who made Slumdog Millionaire and Trainspotting, cast Spiderman actor James Franco as Ralston in the film.

Ralston, now 34, shot to fame after word of his incredible ordeal reached the world. Fitted with a prosthetic arm, he has since become hot property on the motivational speaking circuit, charging up to $37,000 to tell his incredible tale.

Ralston was alone in May 2003 when he set out across Blue John Canyon on a hiking trip, having told no one where he was going. He became trapped when a huge boulder dislodged and survived for five days on water he had been carrying with him. When it ran out, he drank his own urine, carved his own death notice in the rock and, delirious, filmed a goodbye message on his video camera before making the decision to cut himself free.

I cannot remember a reaction to a film like this in a very long time, perhaps not since The Exorcist sent audiences scurrying for the doors.

The gory details included bending his arm until it broke in several places and tearing through tough tendons with a pair of miniature pliers. He then scaled down a sheer rock face and hiked across the canyon before being able to raise the alarm.

Ralston's memoir, Between a Rock and a Hard Place, went on to become a best-seller and the basis of Boyle's film.

Boyle said Ralston was often portrayed as a hero, but the filmmaker was interested in portraying his transformation from someone "super-confident about their abilities" to an ordinary man.

"Some people look at Aron's story and see it as a superhuman thing, but I look at it as a survival story that anyone can relate to. People might look at what he did and say, 'My god! I could never do that. I could never cut off my own arm!' And I say, 'Yes, you could!'" Boyle told The Vancouver Sun yesterday, admitting to "flexing the truth" in his adaptation.

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"The only way you can watch a man cut his own arm off, in real time and get through it is if you live in it from a first-person point of view. This is something anyone could do if they had to. That was the way I looked at it, right from the beginning."